Remember how FDR executed American Nazi sympathizers?

[HiPointDem]

207. i'm well aware of that. the area near where i grew up was once covered with japanese truck

farms; my stepfather participated in helping round up japanese during the internment.

it's fairly well-accepted that there was anti-japanese agitation in these parts partly because certain people had designs on their land. that and the obvious hysteria after pearl harbor.

to say that morbidity/mortality was more or less 'normal' and that camp conditions were generally decent is not to say the internment was justified or that people didn't suffer.

the internment was *not* justified and the government knew it. i believe that's a documented fact. and as i said in an addendum to my previous post (not sure you saw it) -- it should have been clear even at the time that something was screwy, because hawaii had the biggest japanese population in US territory -- about 1/3 of the population being japanese or part japanese -- yet most of them were not interned. even though hawaii had high strategic military value, even though it had been attacked, etc.

i believe they weren't interned because they were needed as plantation labor and also because they were much more closely integrated (through intermarriage, etc) with the rest of the hawaiian population rather than being a somewhat isolated minority as on the west coast.

but if they were a security risk anywhere, it was in hawaii, for various reasons.